Egypt Parliamentary Elections to Start March 21

Egypt is to hold a parliamentary election in stages from March 21 to May 7, organizers said Thursday, its first since the July 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

The vote is expected to help consolidate the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who ousted Morsi and targeted his Muslim Brotherhood movement in a crackdown that has left hundreds dead.

After ousting Morsi, then army chief Sisi announced a political roadmap that envisaged adopting a new constitution, to be followed by presidential and parliamentary elections.

The new constitution, which expanded the powers of the military, was adopted in a January 2014 referendum with a 98 percent yes vote.

The presidential election, which Sisi won with 97 percent of the vote on a 47 percent turnout, was held in May.

The parliamentary election, which is the final stage of the process, is to be spread over a month and a half, with first one half of the country, then the other holding two rounds of voting, chief electoral officer Ayman Abbas told reporters.

The vote will be held under a complex electoral system that was originally designed to produce as representative a parliament as possible but which critics say has been emptied of meaning now that the main opposition groups have been outlawed.

The Muslim Brotherhood was blacklisted as a terrorist group in December 2013 and its main leaders are all on trial on charges that could carry the death penalty.

Even secular opposition groups have seen their leaders jailed.

Some of the 567 seats will be contested on party lists but others will be fought on a first-past-the post basis in individual constituencies, where second-round runoffs will be held where necessary.

The first 14 of Egypt's 27 provinces will go to the polls on March 22-23 with runoffs scheduled for April 1-2.

The other 13 provinces will vote on April 26-27 with runoffs on May 6-7.

Egyptians abroad, of whom there are many in the Gulf states, will kick off the election with voters native to the first group of provinces casting their first round-ballots on March 21-22.

Voting for expatriates from the second group of provinces will climax with runoffs on May 5-6.